meaning that they worked for a lord who owned the land they worked on exchange for a place to erect a hovel. A good lord looked after his peasants and they fared reasonably well, and a bad one or incompetent one caused the lower classes a lot of grief. Most fiefs were self-sufficient, meaning they grew their own food and made their own goods for their needs. There was always a small merchant class and guilds of craftsmen in the towns whom you could call middle-class, but they really didn't come into a powerful class until the Renaissance.

the middle class, or 'the other 99%' get the shaft, you have the makings of a revolution. 'Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else', by David Cay Johnston, should be required reading in the USA right now.

Chapters 7 and 8 show we are subsidizing the richest 1 and 1/2% along with the globalizing multinational corporations who outsource jobs and capital overseas, leaving Joe Sixpack to pick up the tab ! With everyone who makes less than $3 million the 'suckers' in this tax system game, the Republicans have played us for fools in order to pay for foreign adventures in Iraq and taxcuts for those in an economy that, as Edward Wolff puts it, is Top Heavy.

that IS their plan. Many people in the middle class are fast becoming the working poor class-just look at declining wages, and the death of unions. Most people in this country are just too damn complacent, comfortable and oblivious to care. They ONLY care when it happens to them, which no doubt it will in the near future, and by then it will be too late...

13. There's no certified "one way". But if we're using Income Distribution...

...Tables then it's a good approximation.

A quick search found this:

"There's no standard definition of "middle class," so we looked at households with pre-tax income of between $25,000 and $75,000 -- a group occupying roughly the middle half of the Census income distribution tables. As we noted before, that group grew smaller during the economic recession of 2001 and the initially slow recovery of 2002. Now the new Census figures indicate it continued to decline in 2003, and while this time some of the middle group were moving up , a larger portion were moving down."

The problem of course with "Household Income" is that a "Household" can be from one individual on up. But generally speaking as a calculating tool, not necessarily for outputs but relationships, they're pretty helpful IMO.

A portion are moving down and a portion of the lower class has fallen into poverty. 1.3 million people fell into poverty last year. This was the first increase in the poverty rate we have had a long time.

is seriously out of date. It assumes that a family of four spends about a third of its income, or $6,000 a year on food, meaning the poeverty level is $18,000 for a family of four.

Well, lo and behold, food has not inflated as fast as housing, healthcare, transportaion, fuel, clothing, and everything else, so that average family now only spends one sixth of its income on food, the same $6,000 of a market basket of staples, and that means the real poverty level for a family of four is $36,000 per year.

That is awfully close to our median wage folks, and that's the kind of thing that the Democratic party needs to address. Not only has the middle class been thrust into the working class, the working class is now living in real poverty. Poverty, according to the old formula, may now be classified as destitution, since it doesn't afford subsistence.

"A second meaning of middle class is an economic one. On thisdefinition, being middle class is having a middle-class standardof living or having an income level that is somewhere in themiddle of the income distribution. Virtually all empiricalstudies in economics have all taken this route and have examinedeither the percentage of income going to the middle incomequintiles or middle 60% of the population (Levy 1988), or someincome space around the median level of income (Thurow 1985, 1987;Blackburn & Bloom 1985; Horrigan & Haugen 1988; Davis & Huston1992). For example, Thurow (1985) defines the middle class as anyhousehold with 75 percent to 125 percent of median householdincome, a definition which has been used in a large number ofempirical studies.

Let's see what happens.

The 2003 Inflation Adjusted Median Household Income was $43,318. The NonAdjusted Median was $58,639.

If you use the $43,318 Median the "Middle Class" is approximately 23.6% of all Households, with the bottom at $32,488, and the top at $54,147.

If you use the higher $58,639 the "Middle Class" is around 24.3% with the bottom at $43,988, and the top at around $73,313.===========================================================

Since I haven't done this for 2002 down I really don't know what it means.

I can imagine it's shrinking too but we already know that from the one-half/double equation...

If you ask the average American to classify him or herself, they're most likely to say that they're "middle class." The vast majority of Americans will willingly accept that title, but obviously, mathematically, only about 20% of us can be middle class if you divide things up in the range of poor or near poor, lower middle class, middle class, upper class and rich to near rich.

A recent nationwide survey by the Gallop poll and CNN/USA Today, found that, by income, the average middle class household earns around $40,000 total in income, the lowest bracket covers no earnings at all up to about $17,000-- the lower class definition by income is about $17,000 to $31,000. Middle class, by this survey is around $31,000 to $49,000, upper middle class from $49,000 to $76,000 and that top 20% bracket, over $76,000. Interestingly enough, this survey found that middle class households tend to be clustered right here in the middle west as well as the east and west coast.

The income level separating the lowest 20 percent of households from the second 20 percent decreased by 1.9 percent, to about $18,000, while the level separating the fourth 20 percent from the highest 20 percent increased, by 1.1 percent, to about $86,900. A third measure involves the share of aggregate income that each 20 percent of households received. The share of income received by the lowest 20 percent of households declined from 3.5 percent to 3.4 percent, while the shares of the other groups did not change.

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